Friday, January 22, 2016

‘The X-Files’ Review: Fox Revival Makes You Believe Again

Absent from the small screen nearly 14 years, The X-Files is back on Sunday on Fox right after the NFC Championship Game. With tens of millions of eyeballs likely on the football game, the event series starring David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson is, as my video review above says, planting a flag in America 2016 even as it wonderfully resurrects much of what made it such pivotal TV back during Bill Clinton’s presidency.

Strikingly serious and silly at the same time, the six episodes are actually a lot like the original X-Files — you either go with it or you don’t. And if you want to believe (to paraphrase the poster Duchovy’s Fox Mulder had up in the duo’s FBI HQ basement office in the original series), this X-Files is well worth opening up.

Besides Mulder and Anderson’s Dana Scully, a lot of the old gang are back from Mitch Pileggi as FBI Assistant Director Walter Skinner; William B. Davis as the seemingly all-knowing and all-powerful Smoking Man; conspiracy theorists the Lone Gunmen; and of course creator Chris Carter, who wrote and directed the first episode.